On Friday, 2 March, Political Analysis South Africa made contact with the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform, Phumuzile Ngwenya-Mabila, to give her an opportunity to respond to concerns about the African National Congress’ (ANC) envisaged policy of land expropriation, by outlining the ongoing parliamentary processes on the issue.
Ngwenya-Mabila explained “as the ANC we have taken a decision, a resolution at the conference [the ANC National Conference in 2017], after we realised that the land reform process is very slow. We decided on the expropriation of land without compensation, but that must not compromise the economy, and must not compromise agricultural production, as well as job opportunities.”
Asked about how the ANC would ensure that the policy does not affect the economy or compromise food security and jobs, Ngwenya-Mabila responded, “The government has to sit down. The motion has been passed that the constitutional review committee must sit down and look at section 25 of the constitution [the South African Constitution], which speaks of the just and equitable compensation, so that committee will review this section, and from there the government must come up with a process on how we are going to implement that.”
Ngwenya-Mabila said she could not preempt the findings of the constitutional review committee, but clarified that the motion passed by Parliament was an amended motion of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), “because the EFF was saying we need to establish an ad hoc committee that will review section 25, then we said no, we can’t establish a committee on top of another committee, because there is a constitutional review committee which is composed of the NA [National Assembly] members and also the NCOP [National Council of Provinces] members. So that committee must be given that responsibility.”
Ngwenya-Mabila concluded by saying as with all parliamentary processes, there will be a stakeholder engagement and public participation process “and the views of the public will be heard, then discussed, and we will see which ones are relevant to what we are intending to do, which ones are not irrelevant. Because when you conduct public hearings people just sometimes raise general issues, but others will raise issues that are related to that section 25 – which talks of the property clause.”